From Woo Hoo to boohoo as Blur movie bids an emotional goodbye

11 April 2012
The Weekender

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Blur: No Distance Left To Run
****

As its title suggests, the new Blur documentary is the final full stop for a band that seemed to be finished six years ago.

Blur's Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree were together once more for the Leicester Square premiere last night, and will surely reunite in private many more times.

But as this emotional film follows their story from school plays to last summer's tearful reunion concerts, loose ends are tied, relationships are restored and all that's missing is a shot of them walking arm in arm into the sunset.

Running men: Damon Albarn with a fan at the Leicester Square screening

Directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace don't try anything fancy, simply juxtaposing fresh one-on-one interviews with each bandmate and performance footage from across a long career. Blur narrate their own story.

We see dominant frontman Albarn playing Zeus in a school production, the only role big enough for an already-burgeoning ego.

There are more laughs to be had at early Blur footage, Albarn coming across more attention-seeking toddler than future composer of Chinese opera.

Quickly, though, they become recognisable as one of our most special bands.

The Madchester sound cannot contain them. Soon they are conceiving Britpop in a time of grunge, then beating the Americans at their own game with the rough-edged rock of their self-titled fifth album.

As with the Metallica documentary Some Kind Of Monster, it's the honesty they show on camera that makes the film compelling.

Coxon admits needing to be talked down from a window ledge on the day their single Country House got to number one.

Bandmates: Alex James and Graham Coxon

James is delightfully open about how much he loves his three friends. Albarn is cagier about his leading role in removing Coxon from the band in 2002, but shows rare vulnerability when comparing deadly rivals Oasis to the bullies he faced at school.

Apart from professional optimist James, none seem to have enjoyed the Parklife pinnacle of their fame, which made last summer's pain-free reunion shows as special for the band as their fans.

In the railway museum where they became Blur, at Glastonbury and twice at Hyde Park, they were loud and passionate, completely in the moment, revelling in a back catalogue unrivalled among their contemporaries.

With all involved having moved on to, among other things, an imminent new Gorillaz album, the songs, and this film, are all that remains.

No Distance Left to Run is a worthy tribute in which the good memories comfortably outweigh the bad.

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